Dwarkesh Patel: preference

Transcript context

…Think of what we've done to pigs. We took pigs inside from outdoors and we selected them to grow faster and to have this inadvertent greater aggression, the first thing they started doing was getting bored and biting each other's tails. That was a problem, so then we said, “We'll cut the tails off.” Well, that didn't work. So then we had to start clipping the teeth and cutting part of their teeth off. That still wasn't enough when it came to the sows. So then we had to put them in crates to protect them from any other animal, and that wasn't enough. So then we gave them antibiotics and other drugs. At each step, there is a new solution that can't solve the fundamental underlying parts of the problem, and sometimes just makes it worse. Could we make chickens or pigs with no brains? Because it’s the suffering we care about. To the extent that their bodies are just these incredibly well-evolved bioreactors for converting grain into meat whereas optimization has led to more and more cruelty in the past, in this case, this is the ultimate optimization. They're not moving around at all. They are literally just a machine for producing more meat. The suffering is in some sense inefficient, if they're pecking at other animals, if they're catching on wires, etc. This is something that it would be better, even economically, to eliminate. You're right. The suffering is uneconomical at the level of an individual animal. The animals that we have selected for and the way we have treated them result in more of those animals dying, more of them having all kinds of welfare problems. The problem is that it is collectively more efficient. If you can cram twice as many animals into a barn, it doesn't matter if 10% more of them die. That's been the underlying model of this industry. The reason welfare gets neglected is that it has a slight cost, but the efficiency gains are so much greater. I agree we should try and find things to reverse that. I am personally more optimistic about these kinds of incremental reforms. The average person listening to this is not thinking, "Oh yeah, I'm really pumped for the brainless chickens to come along and just persuade me."…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.